Friends For Fullerton's Future

May 20, 2010Orange County Government

Gerald L Klein for Judge

A Friend and devoted mother sent us this personal note regarding attorney Gerald Klein who is running for OC Superior Court Judge in June.

I hired Gerald Klein to handle my child custody battle six years ago because I believed that he would be the best choice to protect me and my daughter’s rights through representation. Through the years since, I have only known Mr. Klein to be tough, fair, and objective in the court room. What stands out most about Gerald Klein is his impartiality. I remember expressing ill feelings towards my ex-husband to him one day. He stopped me mid sentence and told me that my attitude was not going to benefit my daughter at all. It was then that I realized how much he truly cared, not just for my case, but for my child’s best interest as well. When I found out that Gerald Klein is running for judge in June, I felt compelled to share how deserving of this position he is.

Among his accomplishments, he founded Kid’s First in 1996. It is a program for separated or divorced parents and their children. Both parents attend this 8 week course together with their children to help the kids cope with changes in the family.

Klein has been practicing law for 33 years and has sat as a temporary volunteer judge in Orange and Los Angeles counties since 1981. He is active in the community and he also teaches Family Law and Community Property as a part-time professor at a local law school. Although I only witnessed his expertise in family law, he is familiar with many types of law as he had a general practice in his early years.

Read more about Gerald L Klein for Judge at geraldlkleinforjudge.com.

May 19, 2010Behind Closed Doors

A Tale of Two Toms

by Grover Cleveland27 Comments

mauk-200x300 — Anybody can juggle one orange.

It’s not easy to look like you’re taking responsibility for some screw up or other when in reality you’re trying to spin as fast as you can to avoid accountability. But that’s exactly what seasoned bureaucrats do, and that’s precisely what County CEO Tom Mauk is up to now. It’s same old song: mistakes were made (passive voice, no subject of sentence), but corrective action is being implemented.

I have gotten hold of Mauk’s report to the Board of Supervisors about the massive fiasco in the County’s acquisition of the money pit at 433 West Civic Center – at the behest of the other Tom, County Clerk Tom Daly.

View the full memo

It would seem that the Board was never given crucial information about the true costs of remodel and remodel/expansion of the building. This data is shown in Attachment A to Mauk’s report, and is damning. Mauk doesn’t really even say he’s sorry for not passing critical cost information to the Board. The projected amounts developed by the County RDMD were significant – in the millions – and congruent with the ultimate figures presented by Kishimoto Architects, hired by Daly after the sale went through.

What information the Board was given was rosy: work on the building would be relatively minor, that the building was “reasonably maintained,” and that renovation would be done by Daly.

Wrong on all counts.

But everything is still okay, see, because the County has been using the lot for parking and has saved a whopping $26,000 a year. Mauk wraps up his report with this whopper:

“In the meantime, it does appear that having the property in our inventory is a positive outcome.”

Well only in government bureaucracies is wasting $2,100,000 on a near worthless property considered a positive outcome. I can only hope some Supervisor who really wants to supervise something will ask Mauk to quantify that statement. Mr. Moorlach?

Mauk may choose to do the Texas two-step around the truth, but I won’t. Check out the list of people CC’d at the bottom of that RDMD memo. The County Clerk was well aware of the millions needed to make that building functional and yet disclosed none of it to the Board; neither did the RDMD staff who created it. How come this happened? Mauk doesn’t bother to inform his readers. Hopefully the Board will be curious.

Was Daly hoping his $60,000 investment in Townsend and Associates was going to pay off with a big State grant that would cover the true costs to relocate the archives? If so that idea sure bombed big time.

What is inescapable is the conclusion that both the Clerk’s Department and the RDMD deliberately withheld the true financial implications of this acquisition in order to get the Board to go along with it. Is there another explanation? It would also appear that Mr. Mauk would now like the whole thing whitewashed.

So that’s the story. Now, who’s going to do something about it?

May 19, 2010May 19, 2010Hidden Government Agencies

“MANAGER OF THE YEAR” TOM DALY MANAGES TO WASTE OVER $70,000 OF TAXPAYER MONEY ON REMODEL. OCEA IS M.I.A. –AGAIN!

by admin8 Comments

While several county departments have to endure furloughs and layoffs, “Manager of the Year” Tom Daly seems to be on a mission to continue to waste public money the taxpayers be damned. We recently learned that a remodeling project for a “marriage ceremony and passport application acceptance room” is near completion. The cost to tax-payers: $73,000 plus change. For a remodel. Of a room. I’m pretty sure we won’t hear a peep from OCEA and it’s head thug, Nick “Bullhorn” Beradino. I’m still hoping Nick misplaced the bullhorn in some nook or cranny and is frantically looking for it..

I would like to invite OCEA members and the general public to come and see for themselves how this wastrel continues to shove his crazy spending down the taxpayers’ collective throat. From the looks of it, no expense was spared. But you be the judge.

The location is: Old Orange County Courthouse, 2nd floor
211 West Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana, CA 92701

And while you are at it, drive by the $2.1 million money pit Tom bought 2-years ago for his Sports Hall of Shame, at:

433 Civic Center Drive
Santa Ana, CA 92701

After you soil yourselves in anger, call Tom Daly at (714) 834-2248 and let him know how you feel about this wasteful spending.

I am providing the address because I want to make sure that the OCEA and Nick Berardino don’t get lost on their way to protest this wasteful spending just like they did the Board of Supervisor’s remodel last year.

Nick, if you need to borrow a bullhorn let me know. OCEA needs to tell Tom that this has to stop. The voters need to send Tommy boy a strong message this June. Vote career politician and free-spending Tom Daly out of office!!

By the way, it would interesting to know what the Board of Supervisors know about this latest misadventure. Wanna call up and ask?

May 19, 2010May 19, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Pacific Strategies: Ventriloquism For Uncle Bill and The Little Kids

by Grover Cleveland9 Comments

billcampbell-240x300 — There's a little stick in back that makes my head swivel.

Sometimes its hard to tell whether certain people are stupid or lazy. Or maybe a little of both. Take, for instance, County Supervisor Bill Campbell who is currently the Chairman of the OC Children and Families Commission.

As a commissioner he has approved big PR contracts to his political pal Matthew J. Cunningham whom he also appointed to the County Parks Commission. And I mean really big contracts. And apparently free of either competition or real scrutiny.

Part of Cunningham’s job is to ghost write pro-commission “op-ed” pieces for politicians across the political spectrum who either can’t be bothered, or who are too illiterate to do it themselves. The topic of these scribblings is always the same: protect the tax revenue!

Here’s an invoice where Mr. Conservative Republican Wordsmith is wordsmithing hard for – Bill Campbell!

And looky here, we’ve uncovered the fruits of Mr. Cunningham’s labors in the OC Register.

There are some fun quotes about rigorous audits and Grand Jury approbation that come a-tumblin’ out of the old mannequin’s mouth, but these are my faves:

“I can say unequivocally that if state government emulated the prudent, sensible and farsighted operations and budgeting practices of the Children and Families Commission, there would be no state budget crisis.”

Uh, yeah, like handing out a $200K per year PR contract that enables your pal to put semi-intelligent words in your mouth for $200 an hour.

“…while our commission contracts out as many functions as possible so more dollars go toward funding services rather than bureaucracy.”

See comment above. Contracting out unnecessary PR crap for $200 an hour services like facebook updates, going to lunch with Steve Greenhut, and passing out toothbrushes. Newsflash Bill – that robs funding. Contracting out for unnecessary services is incompetent. Directing that largess to a political crony is despicable.

“Taxpayers should cast a critical eye on the idea of abolishing such county Children and Families commissions, which are locally accountable and manage their budgets responsibly…”

Uh huh. Yeah. Sure, Bill. You pass out hundreds of thousands annually for lobbying and PR most of which seems to be mysteriously directed outside Orange County. Well, Campbell also seems to be one of the masterminds behind the unintentionally hilarious Harry Sidhu for Supervisor campaign. And that, in a nutshell, really tells you all you need to know about that sawdust head.

And finally a free wordsmithing tip to the Wordsmith: when you’re going to put words in the mouth of numbskull try to avoid words like “panoply” and “unequivocally.”

May 18, 2010Harry Sidhu

The Joke’s On You!

by Mr. Peabody3 Comments

I got an e-mail today from a friend of mine from Anaheim who isn’t all that politically active, but who saw the 4th District Supervisor WAND forum and has seen the videos of Hide and Seek Sidhu on our website.

Harry'sFriend — One is the loneliest number.

Shock and dismay would be two good words to describe this woman’s impression of Sidhu. But I’ll let her speak in her own words:

I am aware that money is really all it takes to run a political campaign, but I have to say I am really and truly amazed by the campaign of Harry Sidhu. I know he doesn’t live in the district and I know he made up several addresses in order to run in the 4th. Okay. That’s pretty awful.

But what’s really bad is that the man is completely incoherent, has no grasp of any issues, and can only read what has been written for him on index cards. It’s pathetic. I would feel sorry for him if he hadn’t brought this embarrassment on himself. In fact, I really doubt if the man has a sense of shame at all.

At the WAND forum all I heard from this character were platitudes of the emptiest kind and even most of those were irrelevant. His performance at the GOP Central Committee meeting was humiliating – and embarrassing for everybody.

Keep up the pressure on this candidacy. You are doing an great job exposing this empty suit for what he is – an over ambitious, ignorant carpetbagger.

P.S. You can use my name.

M. Rodriguez

Thanks, for that. I couldn’t agree more.

May 18, 2010May 18, 2010Harry Sidhu

News From The OC GOP Central Committee

by admin20 Comments

We’ve just received a message from our good Friend and former Red County blogger Allan Bartlet.

Hello FFFF readers. It’s nice to write for a blog that appreciates independent thinking. It’s nice not to be told what they can and can’t write about or what stories they can and can’t link to…but I digress. It’s official. I am no longer going to be contributing anything else to Red County as long as the taint of Matt Cunningham shilling for the ultra liberal bureaucracy Children & Family Commission is still over there.

I come before you today though to report excellent news from OC Republican Central Committee. Last night was Scott Baugh’s finest hour as Chairman of our party. It was a short meeting as Central Committee meetings go, but what it lacked in duration, it made up in substance. Chairman Baugh started by making some remarks about how great it was that the party has been vindicated for
endorsing Shawn Nelson last month. He put up on a projector for all the members to see, the over the top/lying hit pieces paid for by the county employee and sheriff unions on behalf of Harry Sidhu & Lorri Galloway. He then proceeded to have an impromptu fundraiser for Shawn right there during the meeting! Someone from the audience shouted he would match the first 30 $50 donations to get the ball rolling. For the math challenged, that’s $1500. It then started feeding off of all the energy in the room to fight back against the government unions. By the end of the night, Scott told me that we had raised and gotten commitments for almost $100k for Nelson for the party to do member communications on his behalf.

I couldn’t help but notice that he kept looking at Matt Holder during his presentation as if to say…”game, set, match Matt”. I think it’s fair to say that the gloves came off last night. You see as everyone knows, John Lewis & Matt Holder are running interference behind the scenes to help Harry Sidhu. If Harry gets elected, L&H and the unions will have one more friendly vote for all their lobbying business, which BTW is very substantial. The campaigns they work on are more or less “loss leaders” for them. They make their money on the back end. If Nelson gets elected, that’s two solid votes against them for any business they wanna try to get through the BOS. They would have to be perfect with the remaining three votes. We know they have Janet & Bill Campbell in their back pocket, but Pat Bates has endorsed Nelson. You see where all this is going? Like someone once said…”follow the money”.

Anyways, I just wanna thank Chairman Baugh for his efforts last night. It’s not been often that I publicly give him props, but I definitely wanna praise him when he deserves it.

Thanks for that, Allan. We’ve been pretty tough on both Baugh and the GOP Central Committee in the past. But it looks like things are really changing for the better and an expression of appreciation is in order!

May 18, 2010May 19, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Pacific Strategies – $3,200 for One Op-ed

by Grover Cleveland12 Comments

Was a ghost written “op-ed” worth the $3,200 that Cunningham charged the OC Children and Family Commission? You be the judge. Here is the article that found it’s way into some obscure journal. Notice how the supposed writer, Shawn Steel, starts off by announcing his opposition to prop 10. Sound familiar? Then begins the fight to save Rob Reiner’s legacy.

But really. How could this have taken the better part of 20 hours to produce? That’s two and a half freakin’ days! The Declaration of Independence was written faster.

The irony of the “we know the value of a buck” schtick written by somebody billing the taxpayers $200 an hour to hand out toothbrushes is profound.

And why can’t Shawn Steel write his own op-eds if he actually cares about this issue instead of wasting the CFCOC money? Of course he may not be very bright. For some reason he is a supporter of Hide and Seek Sidhu.

Anyway, here’s the Pacific Strategies billing that reflects the effort on that masterpiece. So what does that work out to, ten bucks a word?

More scary ghost(writer) stories to follow…

May 18, 2010May 18, 2010Boohooism

The Priorities of Organized Labor

by Mr. Peabody5 Comments

Like their brethren among the ranks of the public employee unions, it appears the non-government unions want to grab as much government gravy as they can, too.

Here’s a mailer sent out by labor unions for Lorri Galloway. Same brainless jobs, jobs, jobs theme as Hide and Seek Sidhu, but with a decided emphasis on make-work jobs for union members earning very high prevailing wages.

See, we’re in a budget crisis. So what’s the solution? Jobs! Say what? It takes a few mental bends to figure it out, but presumably people with jobs will pay taxes and increase tax revenue. But wait! Where on Earth are those jobs going to come from? Galloway knows: they come from projects funded by current taxpayers. In other words, ya gotta spend more money to make money. The typical big government refrain. Will it ever break even? Of course not, but who’s keeping track?

Naturally, those “living wage” earners will also need a place to live and Lorri probably has a plan for that too – more subsidized low income housing, of course!

Of course the unions have no more conception of what a County Supervisor does than do Harry Sidhu or Lorri Galloway.

lori2 — You know, I really just don't get it.

Supervisors ARE NOT in the jobs creation business. They are supposed to be there to manage the County government.

And why can’t people like Galloway look at government from the taxpayers point of view? That is: to provide necessary County services efficiently at the best value? Instead its all about satisfying the government workers and their demands. And that’s exactly why the State and the local governments of California are so completely screwed up.

It’s pretty simple. Galloway wants to go to work for the unions, and they are already working for her.

May 18, 2010May 18, 2010Fullerton City Council

On The Agenda – May 18, 2010

by Christian6 Comments

I went to look at the agenda for the May 18^th meeting and had trouble with the City’s website. I was able to download the agenda but none of the supporting documents. So I will attempt to give you a brief and general idea of what is going on. This time I really could use your input in completing the picture. Here is the agenda.

Let’s start with the closed session where we find two major events to look at. First, it looks like maybe the firefighters have come to some agreement with the City regarding cuts to their salaries. We’ll have to see what happens. Also, there are a number of properties that Land Czar Rob Zur Schmiede would love to get his hands on. No doubt he looks to displace dozens of low-income families and replace them with low to moderate income families. Then he and his agency will skim a little off the top of the newly assessed property tax value. As a side note, Assemblyman Chris Norby issued his 6^th Norby Notes email wherein he gives a very good overview of redevelopment agencies and their numerous significant failures.

The properties listed on the agenda include:

324, 401, 419, 425, 449, 455, 475 W. Valencia Drive, 512 S. Ford and 147 W. Santa Fe Avenues in Fullerton.

At this rate, the Land Czar will control all of Fullerton by 2020! No one’s property is safe, not even your kids’ tree house!

Friends For Fullerton’s Future come in on the closed session at #4! If you haven’t heard, FFFF, et al are suing the City of Fullerton. Perhaps admin can give us some idea of what might be happening. Perhaps an easy way for this suit to go away might be to elect some new council members who will put the reigns on the Land Czar and get the Redevelopment Agency under control.

Coming in at #5 is Chris Meyer. The agenda just lists this as a personnel matter. Is he taking a pay cut or what?? Maybe he has decided to retire and join that $100K pension club. If he does, maybe we can talk him into taking a council member or two with him.

Next we move into the open session. We have a couple of proclamations, one service award, and one presentation by the American Veterans Memorial Association.

After the fluff, you have an opportunity to address the council and tell them what you think. It’s a good way to get your voice heard. Don’t mind the members with their fingers in their ears whistling Dixie out their backsides; that’s normal.

This meeting’s consent calendar is pretty big with 11 items. We have the obligatory minutes, end of period financial statement (March 31), capitol expenditure report (also as of March 31), and then a slue of construction projects.

Among them is the library remodel project with $4,142,377.25 this month and a total “Guaranteed Maximum Price” of $9,391,000.00. We’ll see… There are 6 other construction jobs worth nearly $2,000,000.

Last on the consent calendar is approval of Final Map for Tract No. 17315. The subdivision is in the Ford/West/Richman Avenues area. Since the City’s website isn’t allowing us to look up the backup documents, I have nothing further to report on this. My guess is this is one of the Land Czar’s projects.

Item 12 takes us out of the consent calendar and into a public hearing over Underground Utilities District No. 15. Part of this is supposed to bury overhead lines on State College Boulevard from Kimberly Avenue to Santa Fe Avenue.

The only “regular business” is item 13, Fullerton Community Center Project review. The agenda says this:

The Fullerton Community Center Project is one of two major projects currently being undertaken as part of the civic center area improvements. These projects include significant renovations and additions to the Fullerton Public Library and the construction of a multi-purpose Fullerton Community Center; parking and circulation improvements, and limited street improvements to Commonwealth Avenue.

Recommendation by the Parks and Recreation and Redevelopment and Economic Development Departments:

Approve the Community Center concept plan, and authorize staff and the Project Manager at Risk (PMAR) to proceed with design development and preparation of a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) based on the conceptual design.

Coming up on May 25 we have the public hearing on Coyote Hills. Expect another crazy night heated opinions. Outside City Hall I heard one man mutter “Why won’t they listen to us? Why do they insist on doing this?” I assumed he was talking about the Coyote Hills development and how the City Council isn’t simply stopping this in its tracks. Who knows, maybe on the 25^th they will. Remember, we have two seats up for re-election and possibly even a third seat if Nelson sweeps the June 8^th Primary.

Also coming up on June 1st, you can expect to find these topics on the agenda.

• Public Hearing – Adopt Budget
• Call Election/Consolidate/Candidate Statements
• April Financials
• Presentation – SCE – State of the Utility
• Proclamation – Marlis Katherine Christianson Wigestrand
• Public Hearing – Towing Ordinance
• Insurance Program Report and Recommendations
• Closed Session – Existing Litigation – Lopez
• Public Hearing – Amend Title 15 – Personal Service Facility/Tattoo Parlors
• St. College Grade Separation Change Order
• Personnel Management Changes
• Draft Request for Interest for Downtown Core & Corridors Specific Plan

As always, please let me know if I missed something that you think is important, especially since I could not access the backup documents for the agenda items.

May 17, 2010May 18, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Watchdog Growls

by admin4 Comments

Teri Sforza at the Register’s “OC Watchdog” bureau has posted a truly alarming story about three graduate students who’ve done some great digging on the compensation allocated to OC City Managers. The figures are astronomical and the publication couldn’t come at a worse time for these Miraculous Mandarins who do so well at our expense. Here’s the compilation:

CityMangerPayola — Please try not to gag.

Be sure to check out the Fullerton row.

Thanks to Sforza for sharing. But the real thanks go to the kids who assembled the data – the real watchdogs.